Guide Interpreters--Mediators Of Cross-Cultural Communication

Interpretation is defined as an extempore oral reproduction, in one language, of what is said in another language. And people who do interpreting are called interpreters. While guide interpretation, being one sub-category of interpretation, is one specialized interpreting conducted in tourist industry and activities. And the practitioner in this field is named as guide interpreter. Besides the similarities between interpretation and guide interpretation, the latter bears its own unique characteristics. It is featured as tourist-oriented, culture-related, emergency-dealt, speech-improvised with limited equivalence in the existing languages. "Translation mediates cultures..." (Newmark, 1995). "A cultural mediator is a person who facilitates communication, understanding, and action between persons or groups who differ with respect to language and culture. The role of the mediator is performed by interpreting the expressions, intentions, perceptions, and expectations of each cultural group to the other, that is, by establishing and balancing the communication between them. In order to serve as a link in this sense, the mediator must be able to participate to some extent in both cultures"(R.Taft,1981:53). Guide interpreters, as mediators in the cross-cultural communication activities, bearing linguistic competence, flexible techniques and communicative abilities at hand, are to be aware of the cultures, such as the very culture of the spot, their tourist complicated background, producing immediate equivalence in cultures with emergency-dealt techniques utilized.Guide interpretation is no easy job to work with, and there are many taboos the practitioners should fight against, such as literal and transliteration overuse, corpulent wording, specialized vocabulary craze and personal feelings burst. Also there exist some effective strategies for guide interpreters to utilize in their work. With the popularity of the tourist industry, the demand and challenge for guide interpreters also go up acutely. A well-equipped guide interpreter has to bear in his or her mind not only the languages concerned, but also the cultures related. Only by acting as a successful cultural mediator could the guide interpreter be addressed as a qualified one.